Tips for best utilizing the powerful Groundbreaker Guardian Rank perk. Groundbreaker Groundbreaker is a kind of damage just like any other, and therefore can receive some bonuses and be buffed, beyond whatever damage you used to build it up in the first place. Groundbreaker can be delivered by melee or slam, and the only method by which it can be applied to multiple targets is via ground slamming. Even the Stinger nova, if it hits mulitple enemies, will only deliver Groundbreaker to one of them. Bonus elements apply to Groundbreaker, such as the ASE 50% bonus elements and Urad and Re-Volter. Since there is no mayhem scaling involved with Groundbreaker, all of these bonus elements properly scale. The Guardian Angel's damage bonus also applies to Groundbreaker, which is a very strong synergy when applying Groundbreaker at a distance and to multiple enemies with a ground slam. Other global bonuses apply, such as V1 from Victory Rush and the bonus from Burn Both Ends.

Tips for recovering from Fight For Your Life (FFYL) as Amara at endgame. FFYL Amara loses a lot of her buffs when going into FFYL, including Do Harm stacks, the Killstack anointment, and self-dots. Here are some tips to help you get up if you've gone down. HAVE A GOOD FFYL GUN This is the most important measure against death. Good FFYL guns for Amara are basically guns that are powerful on their own. Prime examples are the Free Radical and the Plasma Coil. Other strong contenders are the Backburner, the Plaguebearer, and the Sand Hawk. The Backburner and Plaguebearer both have a vortex/singularity effect, which can be useful for keeping enemies in place, preventing them from running away. Another less-well-known gun is the Ember's Purge. This gun works well for grounded enemies. When shooting an enemy, there's a random chance a fire puddle will appear beneath them, and this puddle does massive damage to anything standing in it. If you're a melee build and have a Static Charge, a Face Puncher is a great FFYL weapon. (It's even better if Body & Mind is active.) Static Charge will chain to nearby enemies, building up Groundbreaker for every Face Puncher shot. SHOOT THE GUARDIAN ANGEL Lots of builds use the Guardian Angel to buff their attacks, and this gun is actually an amazing FFYL gun if you're also specced Indiscriminate. The Guardian Angel's damage bonus will get double dipped by Indiscriminate. So you can repeatedly fire at a single enemy in front of you, and the ricochets will find enemies off to the side and obliterate them. The Guardian Angel is also useful if you have any decent strength dots on enemies when you go down, as it will increase the damage of those dots. You can get decent dots even without building for them if you're using high-dot weapons like the Free Radical or Plasma Coil or Kickcharger. FFYL GUN ANOINTMENT Take care in choosing the anointment for your FFYL gun. Most of the time, it's between Consecutive Hits and Urad. Consecutive Hits is useful because Amara won't have a lot of gun damage while in FFYL. But Urad can be just as effective. If you're specced into Sustainment, beware that you can lifesteal while in FFYL. Your health might not be visible, but it's still there, and you can lifesteal out of Urad, deactivating the anoint while you're still in FFYL. In general, I choose Urad, unless I'm specced Sustainment, in which case I choose Consecutive Hits. USE GROUNDBREAKER When shooting an enemy while in FFYL, if you have Indiscriminate specced, you often don't need to finish an enemy off with your gun. Indiscriminate builds lots of Groundbreaker damage from the other enemies. You can get the enemy in front of you most of the way down, and punch your way through the rest. Be careful, though: if you have to crawl to close the distance to connect a punch, you may inadvertently decrease your time in FFYL by losing the Dead Man Walking Guardian Rank perk. It's a balancing act. USE YOUR MINIMAP The instant you get put into FFYL, check your minimap for the most likely target. You should not be spending time in FFYL looking for an enemy to shoot. This can save you precious seconds. Ping the enemy you want to kill to highlight them, so you can follow them in case they become obscured. PREDICT YOUR FFYL If you know you are in a sticky situation you can't get out of, pre throwing a grenade or Fish Slap or grasping an enemy can set you up to recover quickly. For example, if you're mid-reload and a group of enemies starts attacking, but your Ties That Bind is availble, don't wait to finish the reload. Instead, grasp an enemy, then go down. The Lead Or Alive Guardian Rank perk will reload your guns for you, and you'll have an easy time killing enemies caught in Ties That Bind. There's also the old Borderlands trick where, in a tough encounter, you leave a weak enemy or two alive for easy Second Winding.

Tips for understanding and building with Amara's Blue Tree at endgame. Blue Tree This guide will help you understand the quirks and uses of each of Amara's skills, so that perhaps you can do some build crafting of your own. In this section, we cover the blue (Mystical Assault) tree. DO HARM Very powerful action skill damage increase. It gets further increased in effectiveness by Awakening further down the tree, and the capstone Avatar allows you to stack more Do Harm at a time. This increases all things that are action skill damage, not just your action skills themselves. This includes Revelation, Remnant, Ties That Bind links, Unweave The Rainbow, Body & Mind, Free The Soul, Catharsis, and Ice Spiker. FAST HANDS Very useful, always-on reload and swap speed. Always take this if you're doing anything with guns at all. VIOLENT TAPESTRY Great utility skill, at the very least useful for 1 point simply for the ability to gain Rush stacks by applying a status effect. Even with a Phasezerker class mod, you can keep your stacks topped up very easily with this skill. If you need to be applying status effects in general, whether its to enemies or to yourself, it's worth investing some points into this skill. It is further increased in effectiveness by Awakening. Violent Tapestry also increases cryo efficiency, making it an extremely important skill for cryo-focused builds. Amara does have a lot of synergy with cryo, either directly or indirectly through melee-related skills. ALACRITY Always worth at least 1 point in a gun build. A good place to dump points if you need to go further down the tree. TRANSCEND Very strong critical hit damage increase, especially because it can be stacked twice with Avatar. Great for boss melts when the boss has an accessible crit spot. A purple Mantis class mod can give you an extra three points into this skill making those boss melts go even faster. This skill can also be taken for builds that crit in unconventional ways, such as Ruby Swan or any Spark Plug build. RESTLESS When Expedite is available, this skill is pretty low value. Otherwise, it can be a points dump if you don't need the reload speed from Alacrity or anything above it. ASCENDANT Always taken if you're going at all deep into blue tree. Increasing the effectiveness of augments like Glamour, Expedite, and Stillness of Mind is game changing for how a build can play and flow. FROM REST This skill is hit or miss, depending on the type of guns you are using. If going for a conventional gun build, I would always recommend putting at least 2 points here. Lots of Maliwan weapons feel sluggish without this skill, because of their charge time. If you're strapped for points in this tree, usually Wrath is taken over this skill, but if you have plenty of other gun damage sources (such as Spiritual Driver or a 250% Phasecast gun damage anointment), this can be prioritized over Wrath. LAID BARE Very powerful damage increasing skill. Always taken if you're this far down the tree, and some builds go into blue tree simply to get Laid Bare , because it applies to everything. WRATH Good gun damage increase, nothing more to it. REMNANT Extremely powerful skill. Always take it if you're this far, and you never need more than one point into it. Some builds even require you to get this skill on a class mod. Remnant gets your overkill damage as its base, then gets a x31 multiplier on Mayhem 10/11, and then gets action skill damage, elemental damage, splash damage, etc. It will always target the enemy closest to you, if that enemy is reachable and still existant by the time it gets there. You may have seen some raid boss 1 shots with Remnant. Yes, it's that powerful. AWAKENING If you need to be investing in Do Harm and/or Violent Tapestry, then you also need to be investing in Awakening, if you get this far down the tree. This skill also increases the effectiveness of the damage reduction on the Stone class mod. Having 6/3 Awakening with the Stone gives you significant tankiness. AVATAR Perhaps the most important skill in all of Amara's skill trees. The ability to get twice the amount of Do Harm or Violent Tapestry when you use your action skill can make or break many builds. It also refunds you half of your converted Rush stacks if your action skill activation killed an enemy. And of course, the ability to activate your action skill twice in a row is huge.

A Jakobs Amara, except it also uses a select few other manufacturers. Agent Amara SYNOPSIS A Jakobs Amara, except it also uses a select few other manufacturers. No "Sheriff" or "Deputy", just "Agent". INTRO This build is not for you. It requires extreme care and discipline. It is punishing, if you don't play it correctly. And even sometimes if you do. It's also quite gear specific. You have been warned. ... With that out of the way, this build is the result of putting the Infernal Wish on an Amara gun build. It actively kills you, but rewards you with high damage and the ability to use some weaker weapons. (And the inability to use a lot of regular weapons.) GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES This is a very interesting setup. Sustainment is two points away, but obtaining it requires losing Blight Tiger, Avatar, or 30% elemental/kinetic damage from Burn Both Ends. Blight Tiger is hugely important for infusing Jakobs weapons with corrosive. Losing Avatar is simply not an option; this is a Kensei build, and Avater gives you twice the Kensei damage uptime. And Burn Both Ends synergizes very well with both non-elemental weapons and the Infernal Wish. None of these things can be lost. Which is fine, because Sustainment actually doesn't help very much. Basically, if you have a Wish dot and something healthgates you, you will go down immediately, even with Sustainment. So yes, this build has no life steal and actively tries to kill you. The Wish dot, coupled with an active bonus element (from your shield and grenade anointments), will self-stack Burn Both Ends. Normally, self damage such as the Wish dot does not stack BBE, but the bonus element "ticking on top of it" as a hidden damage instance will stack it. Just through regular action skill usage and gun shooting, BBE will give you damage without having to worry about being damaged by enemies. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. Phasecast coupled with 250% Phasecast gun damage anointment for bossing. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever is suited to the content you are facing. This is a Kensei build, and it also has Infusion at 40%. This is so you can add lots of elemental damage to your non-elemental weapons for better element matchups. Choose your action skill element wisely, as it will greatly impact your damage. CLASS MOD Kensei, with as many points into Joyful Freedom or No Mistakes In Nature as possible, and with one of the four possible manufacturer crit passives: Jakobs, Dahl, Hyperion, and Atlas. This crit passive is a whopping 64% at level 72. And this is why the build is not just restricted to Jakobs weapons. Other recommended passives: weapon damage, action skill cooldown rate, splash damage radius, weapon type damage, weapon crit damage, melee damage, shield recharge rate, incendiary resistance (works against the Wish dot). JAKOBS GUNS This build uses lots of Jakobs guns well, because they tend to pack a stronger punch per trigger pull, and pulling the trigger fewer times is beneifical because you don't want the Wish dot stacking too high. Bekah, Rowan's Call, King's/Queen's Call, Hellwalker, Clairvoyance (single projectile), Love Drill, Trickshot, Bird of Prey. You can even use overlooked or less powerful guns, although some may only work against non-True Takedown-level enemies: Dead Chamber, Companion, Maggie, Quickdraw (have 2 so you can swap between them), Seventh Sense. Some of these guns are normally fired rapidly, such as the Rowan's Call. Exercise trigger discipline and only fire as many times as it takes to kill the enemy. The damage output of this build is designed to require fewer trigger pulls. The Trickshot fires rapidly automatically, but whatever you're aiming at should be dead after 1-2 trigger pulls anyway. All guns with the Consecutive Hits anointment. Killstack would be a contender, but you lose Killstacks when you enter FFYL, and this build definitely enters FFYL. For a bit of nostalgic fun, use a Wedding Invitation with Next 2 Mags Cryo anointment, with an ASE 50% cryo bonus element, and cryo action skill element. You might be surprised how strong it is. The Wedding Invitation, when it crits or hits an enemy with a ricochet projectile, stacks a debuff to both fire and cryo damage, the former up to 100% and the latter up to 200%. Credit to Lonemasterino for this discovery. So cryo damage is very strong with this gun. DAHL GUNS Soulrender, Kaoson (x1), Sand Hawk, with Consecutive Hits anointments. These weapons synergize with the Wish because they allow you to restrict your trigger pulls. The Soulrender can be fired in bursts until a couple skulls appear, at which point you can let off and let the skulls destroy enemies. The Kaoson has extra damage from the stickies exploding, allowing you to stop firing before an enemy is dead. The Sand Hawk, in semi-auto mode and when aimed at a crit spot, kills just about anything in a few shots anyway. HYPERION GUNS Guardian Angel, Masterwork Crossbow, Heart Breaker (x8), Smog, Reflux (x7), Convergence (x3 or x4), all with Consecutive Hits. Exercise trigger discipline and these guns will take you a long way. The Crossbow is especially powerful when you get used to aiming it. The Guardian Angel with Indiscriminate will wipe out a whole group quite easily. ATLAS GUNS Multi-tap and OPQ System, with Conseutive Hits anointments. Trigger discipline required. OTHER GUNS This build can make use of some other guns, in which case you can ditch the manufacturer crit passive on your class mod and use a Splash Damage passive: Anarchy, Contained Blast, Prompt Critical, Backburner. With Consecutive Hits. FFYL GUNS Each manufacturer listed above has a good FFYL option: Hellwalker, Soulrender or Sand Hawk, Guardian Angel, OPQ System. However, it may also be wise to have a separate FFYL gun that will work in all situations, such as the Free Radical or Plasma Coil, with Consecutive Hits anointment. BOSSING GUNS Some of the stronger guns listed above should be equipped with a 250% Phasecast gun damage anointment and be used for bossing: Bekah, Trickshot, Hellwalker, Bird of Prey, Sand Hawk, Soulrender, Anarchy, Contained Blast. SHIELD Infernal Wish, with a highly recommended shield charge part or two. With ASE 50% bonus element anointment. The shield charges are very important for survivability, as the Wish dot will do much less damage to its own shield than to your health bar. A strong dot can be chunking at your health, and picking up a shield charge will suddenly make it much less likely to kill you. Avoid the following augments, which disable the Wish's extra projectile effect: Adrenaline, Capacity, Delay, Recharge, Reflect, Trigger Happy, Turtle. Protip: turn dialog volume all the way down if you do not wish to hear Amara screaming from self-dots all of the time. ARTIFACT An appropriate well-rolled Company Man or Pearl of Ineffable Knowledge with a mag size passive. Passives for Company Man: elemental damage, area of effect damage, melee damage, shield recharge rate, action skill cooldown rate, move speed, incendiary resistance (works against the Wish dot). GRENADE Hyperion Quasar (non sticky) or Mesmer, with ASE 50% bonus element anointment. Both of these are great for crowd control, which may be necessary more often than you expect. Throw these for utility whenever there's a hint of danger. GAMEPLAY LOOP Activate your action skill and start shooting, but exercise great trigger discipline. Only shoot as often as necessary to kill. If needed, wait for your action skill to come back before continuing firing, so that your trigger pulls are more powerful with Kensei damage. If there's trouble brewing, throw your crowd control grenade. Aim for crits. This build will often play like a Deathless build, in that getting health-gated means you instantly go down anyway, because your Wish dot takes out the rest of your HP. But as long as you have a good FFYL gun, this is no problem. Going down resets the severity of the Wish dot. You're just going to have to rewire yourself to not get frustrated by going into FFYL. At the end of combat, or with one enemy left, keep an eye on how strong your Wish dot is. You don't want to go down with no enemies left. If it looks like you might go down, look around for health vials and shield boosters. Health vials, in general, are going to be something you should pay attention to at all times with this build. NOTES - ANATHEMA FIGHT There is a dumb mechanic to this fight where if you pass close to a Guardian mob, you are health-gated just by touching them. This can mean an instant down if you have a Wish dot active. Do your best to avoid the mobs walking around, especially when taking a jump pad back to the arena or when they're doing a pole-vault-front-flip at you. NOTES - RAID BOSSING When referring to bosses like Hemo, Seer, or the True Trials bosses, this build cannot raid boss well at all, unfortunately. If you want to try, equip a Re-Volter with Action Skill Start and use something like a 250% Phasecast gun damage Free Radical.

Urad true melee build. Very engaging, very strong. Golden Swan SYNOPSIS Urad true melee build. Very engaging, very strong. INTRO This is the resurrection of a really old, outdated build , and it has changed (and improved) quite a bit. But the underlying principle is the same: Urad true melee. And it still uses the same unconventional shield. For the longest time I struggled to justify Urad on a true melee build, because to keep Urad active you have to either give up a powerful artifact suffix (by using Deathless) or a powerful shield, all the while it's competing with Terror Cryo at only 25% less of a bonus than Urad. It would take too long to explain the theorycrafting reasoning behind this build, but the biggest factor is that Urad plays well with Elemental Projector while Terror Cryo does not. Beware: As with any true melee build, this build can be tough to get the hang of. It will probably take a couple runs, especially because of its unique survivability strategy. Just watch the gameplay video, properly digest the Gameplay Loop section, and practice. You will be rewarded. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES There are some odd choices here, for sure. Both max health skills at 5/5? Well, our shield is the Front Loader, and the Front Loader translates max health into shield capacity. Yes this build survives with its shield, among other things. Dread in the red tree is picked only for the automatic reload utility, but that won't happen often. We need to get down to Ties That Bind anyway. The rest of the skills are fairly normal for a true melee build. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind with Glamour. This is part of the survivability strat. Any enemy linked with Ties That Bind will be de-aggro'd via Glamour. A not-too tiny side benefit is the area clear TTB provides. But don't worry, this build still has good single target punching damage. The Shooting Star variant of Phaseflare is also used for raid bossing. That is, if you don't use the TTB / Remnant strategy. See the "Notes - Raid Bossing" toward the bottom. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Fire, shock, or corrosive depending on the content you are facing. Do not choose cryo. PUNCHING GUN Psycho Stabber with Urad anointment. Pretty straightforward. Urad will also get added to Groundbreaker damage. SWAP GUN Low level Sellout pistol with Urad anointment. This gun is for shooting your foot to place a dot on yourself in order to proc the Elemental Projector artifact, giving you a huge increase to both the elemental damage of your punch and the Urad bonus element that goes along with it. You only need to shoot once and then swap back to the Psycho Stabber. Each of the three projectiles from the Sellout has a 72% chance to dot you, so it's basically guaranteed. Urad will also start "ticking" on the dot you placed on yourself as a hidden damage instance. This bonus element ticking on a self-dot will stack Burn Both Ends for you, giving you even more elemental damage. To obtain an anointed low level Sellout, rush the story killing as few enemies as possible (having Guardian Rank enabled makes this pretty easy). You can complete the mission at as low a level as 21. When you do so, discard the Sellout mission reward and farm an anointed one from Earl's vendor in Sanctuary. Protip: turn dialog volume all the way down if you do not wish to hear Amara screaming from self-dots all of the time. ALTERNATIVE PUNCHING GUN Unforgiven with Urad anointment. This is to boost the crits from Static Charge, when they manage to crit. And that mostly only happens vs the creatures in the Guardian Takedown, because nearly all of them have forward facing crit spots. When the Static Charge crits while holding this gun, it's pretty much a guaranteed kill, giving you huge Groundbreaker damage for your next punch, especially if the Static Charge kill Hollowpointed another enemy. FFYL / FLYING ENEMY GUN Face Puncher with Urad anointment. This is a Body & Mind delivery system and is great for annoying flying enemies and getting up from FFYL. This build is strong enough to punch up from most situations, if enemies are kind enough to stick around. But the Face Puncher takes care of you when they don't. OPTIONAL SWAP GUN Guardian Angel with Urad anointment. This is only for swapping to after you've sent a beefed up Shooting Star into a raid boss. CLASS MOD Golden Rule, prioritizing points into Laid Bare and then points into Mindfulness. Laid Bare is great damage, and Mindfulness is incredible survivability with the movement speed it grants. Dotting yourself with various elements via the Sellout will also activate the Golden Rule's cooldown effect, giving you *very* short TTB cooldowns. Second, optional class mod would be the Dragon with at least 1 point into Remnant. This is only for a raid bossing strat. Recommended passives: melee damage, action skill cooldown rate, splash or grenade radius (for your grenade), action skill damage, reload speed, shield capacity. SHIELD Front Loader with Apply Terror on Action Skill End. Highly, highly recommend getting at least one Shield Booster augment, and it can come with up to two. The Front Loader takes away your health gate (and activates Urad). This leaves your shield capacity as your main survivability stat. Luckily, Amara can boost that through her max health skills and the Front Loader's health-to-shield effect. But your shield will constantly be slowly draining because you're going to be self-dotting with the Sellout. It won't have the opportunity to recharge. Shield Booster augments greatly enhance the longevity of that shield bar, and they can keep you alive indefinitely if you're really good at dodging damage. ARTIFACT Elemental Projector Static Charge. The Elemental Projector will be procced by your Sellout pistol, granting you lots of damage for both your main punching element and the Urad bonus element. The Static Charge is not only a nice bonus element for your punches, but the chains will be very strong. Urad will also get applied to the Static Charge chains. Recommended passives: melee damage, area damage (in 2nd or 3rd slot), elemental damage (except cryo), action skill cooldown, max shield, reload speed, move speed. GRENADE *inhales* Hyperion Longbow Tran-fusion, in any element, with the Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. Here's where the real fun begins. (And yes, I also learned while making this build that it's "Tran-fusion", not "Trans-fusion".) When this grenade damages shields (blue HP), it sends blue healing orbs to you that refill your shield. When it damages health (red HP), it does the same for your health. We only care about the shield part. You know how Shield Boosters are important for the Front Loader? Well this is doubly important. This picks up the slack when the Shield Boosters can't keep up, when you've sustained a decent amount of damage and your shield is mid to low. More on how to use this in the "Gameplay Loop" section below. Before you get all 5Head on me and exclaim, "But Stone/Swan! The Fish Slap can roll Generator parts, why not use that?!", first of all, don't call me "Stone slash Swan", call me either "Stone" or "Swan". Thanks. Second of all, Generator parts don't work on the Fish Slap. Yeah. Third, even if they did work, the Fish Slap is slow when you need healing fast. That's why we want a Hyperion Tran-fusion instead of an Atlas or Tediore. Last, the Fish Slap would just be doing all of the killing on its own anyway, and that's extremely boring. GAMEPLAY LOOP The basic gameplay loop is very simple; the devil is in the details. This is a long one. Buckle in. Let's start with the basics: shoot your foot with the Sellout, swap to your Psycho Stabber, grasp something, start punching. Rinse and repeat. Use the Face Puncher vs flying enemies if you can't take them out via a Ties That Bind link. You need to be constantly dotted by the Sellout both for damage and cooldown. That means basically any break between enemies, or when damage is suddenly not there vs an enemy, you need to step back, swap, and re-dot before re-engaging. When your action skill element is fire or shock, set your Sellout to corrosive. If your action skill element is corrosive, set your Sellout to fire. This way, you get one dot from your action skill element via Infusion, and a second dot from the element of the Sellout. This means faster stacking Burn Both Ends, faster stacking Mindfulness, and more cooldown from Golden Rule. Taking care of your Front Loader is where most of your focus should go. There are three equally important ways you do this. First, grasp an enemy whenever grasp is available. This is not only for damage (even on single targets - there's some sort of shenanigans with Glamour and the Static Charge, a la the Reflux), but also for aggro control. When you grasp a group, you have some breathing room (provided there aren't a ton of enemies outside that group). They stop attacking you, and you can use a small portion of that time to dot yourself and/or throw your grenade... The second form of care for your Front Loader is the Tran-fusion grenade. Sure, it sucks that it will only refill your shield if it damages shields, but shields are everywhere. If you swing your crosshair around the battlefield it's actually very easy to see blue HP bars and know where to send the grenade. Maliwan enemies always have shields so any area where you know there are fresh Maliwan troops is a good area to chuck this thing. Plenty of CoV enemies also have shields, and it's not hard to find them or know which enemies are most likely to have them. IMPORTANT NOTE: Glamour'd enemies are intangible to grenades. Chuck a grenade at a grasped enemy or any linked enemy with this build and it will pass right through them. Instead, throw it at a floor or wall near them. This is why splash radius passives are recommended. If enemies are lacking shields, that usually means they're weakened, and a Glamour'd Ties That Bind (plus a punch) is probably going to finish the fight. There are two exceptions to this general rule. The first is Guardians in the Guardian Takedown. Here, either fresh enemies (before they've gained an armor bar) or weakened enemies (after the armor bar is depleted) will have exposed shields. Just do a quick scan and you'll find them. If you don't see any, get a Ties That Bind going ASAP. The second exception is creatures in the Guardian Takedown, where there are no shields at all. This leads to the third form of Front Loader care, and that is movement. Smart movement is extremely important in true melee builds, and in this build even more so. You need to be strafing enemy attacks and placing yourself briefly behind cover or backing away while you do things like self-dotting or reloading the Sellout. Don't ever just stand still unless you're engaging an enemy you know you're going to kill. Know your enemies, keep an eye on the mini-map. Those creatures in the Guardian Takedown? Easily survived by just your Shield Boosters if you know how and when they attack and can dodge them. The many points in Mindfulness this build has makes quick movements very easy. Pay attention to my movement in the gameplay video and note how I'm always throwing in little strafes and such. Strafing causes enemies to miss and also forces them to spend time turning toward you, which is very effective at close range. Note that the strats with the grenade are only in play if you see your shield at mid to low levels. If you've got the movement down and you're doing really well at avoiding damage, then Shield Boosters will last you a long time. But always be keeping an eye on your shield capacity and have an idea of where blue HP bars might be on field. NOTES - RAID BOSSING This build doesn't have the same sort of raid boss punching ability that Sulphur Swan and Steel Swan have. Instead, you have three different options: Shooting Star, Remnant, and plain ole Fish Slap. Shooting Star: when you initially summon the ball and punch it out, recall it once and punch it only once with the Psycho Stabber and you're good to go. Punching it a second time will end it prematurely, because of the extra damage instances provided by Urad and Static Charge. You can swap to the Guardian Angel and back away if you want even more damage from the ball, but my favorite thing to do is follow the ball and start punching along with it to keep delivering Groundbreaker. It also feels cooler and more interactive this way. Remnant: Swap to a Dragon class mod with at least one point in Remnant. Wait for a mob to get near the boss, grasp the boss so the mob is linked, punch the boss, then watch Remnant float in like the Angel of Death and delete the boss. Fish Slap: Hold either the Psycho Stabber or Guardian Angel and chuck fish. It's boring but it works. Of course, for any of these strats, always be self-dotted for lots more damage. NOTES - ANATHEMA This fight can be frustrating. When Anathema's radiation bubble goes off, some of the other guardians in the arena survive and are irradiated. Their radiation aura will damage you if you get near them, and because you don't have health gate, it will be instant FFYL. Just do your best to avoid them. NOTES - CRYSTAL PHASES IN GTD These sections can be pretty easy. Ties That Bind and Glamour mean you can get away with hardly attacking any of the enemies, if you play it right and get lucky. Make sure you're still dotted, though, to keep the Golden Rule cooldown going and get grasp back. Sometimes TTB + Glamour won't be perfect, though, because we aren't specced Ascendant for more Glamour time and because Burn Both Ends makes enemies *really* angry. If things get out of hand, don't be afraid to use the Face Puncher liberally. What I like to do during crystals with any true melee build is use cheesy strats for the first two crystals, then switch back to punching when I get to the third crystal, where I can take my time. NOTES - GEARBOX This build hosts a few bugs/quirks courtesy of Gearbox that may lead to some frustration: grasp bugs, Blitz bugs, and the Psycho Stabber animation lockout. Just know that getting up from FFYL is usually never a problem, and this build is rewarding enough to overcome these frustrations.

Tips for understanding and building with Amara's Purple Tree at endgame. Purple Tree This guide will help you understand the quirks and uses of each of Amara's skills, so that perhaps you can do some build crafting of your own. In this section, we cover the purple (Enlightened Force) tree. TRUST IN YOURSELF Very effective boost for reload speed, swap speed, and charge speed. This skill can stack twice, and when using a shield with Action Skill Start, after activating that anointment, all you need to do is take damage against your shield for this skill to proc. When stacked twice, some of these speeds become almost comical. The swap speed in particular is useful for builds that do a lot of swapping, such as Emerald Swan. NO MISTAKES IN NATURE A basically always-on melee damage increase. Further down the tree is Joyful Freedom, which has a bit more melee damage and can be stacked by multiple action skill uses, however it cannot be activated while in FFYL, which is one benefit that this skill has. HEAVY RAIN Great splash damage increase, and the projectile speed increase is wonderful for many weapons. However, the speed can make some guns such as the Plaguebearer and the Nukem harder to use. GO WITH THE FLOW Minimal speed and gun damage increase. On a build that does a lot of freezing of enemies, this skill can be justified. Otherwise, it doesn't have much value. Note that it also procs on any cryo self damage. UNWEAVE THE RAINBOW Very good cryo synergy skill, whether you're using something like a Frozen Heart shield, or freezing enemies with your gun or melee attacks. It can be applied, for example, to Tandava in conjunction with an Action Skill Start Frozen Heart. Basically, if you're freezing things, you probably want this skill. It is increased by action skill damage. EBB AND FLOW Good but mostly redundant life steal skill. You can grab this if you're not getting Sustainment, but then you're probably attacking with the Stinger or Fish Slap or Blade Fury or Kensei, because true melee without Sustainment is asking for trouble. If you are specced Sustainement (or are using a Knife Drain), this skill is redundant, because your elemental melee damage that you used to kill the enemy will heal you to full anyway. COMBO BREAKER Not entirely reliable, but very helpful when it procs. This skill is somewhat bugged in that it doesn't reset your action skill correctly if its still active, such as when a grasp or Phaseflare is active. But it's not a waste if you have a decent form of melee damage on your build. Like Ebb and Flow, this skill can proc from Kensei damage. JOYFUL FREEDOM Stackable melee damage increase. It also works on fakegrasping, although it is rather inconvenient to do so and the stacks don't go too high before they decay. BURN BOTH ENDS This skill has its own section here. BODY & MIND Very strong skill, when invested into with action skill damage, both as a supplement for true melee damage and for the Face Puncher. The FP will proc a B&M nova for every pellet. It'll proc twice as many novas if you also have at least one point into Infusion. FREE THE SOUL With lots of action skill damage, this skill is like Remnant 2.0, but it can hit multiple enemies and it acts much faster. Of course, you have to be cryo focused to take advantage of it. However, despite what the skill says, an enemy doesn't need to be fully frozen when they die in order for this skill to proc. They only need to be 75% of the way to being completely frozen. ATMAN Decent flat action skill damage increase. If you're investing into action skill damage and this far down the tree, it's a great place to dump points. CLEAR THE MIND Very strong in some situations, however, its strengths are often devalued by the fact that you can often element match. Not every kind of attack can, though, and for those, Clear The Mind is valuable.

A thematic Blade Fury build. Ragebow SYNOPSIS A thematic Blade Fury build. INTRO The goal for this build is to deal every type and element of damage possible for Amara. Literally, there are damage types in this game, and it's the reason why, for example, grenade damage doesn't increase the damage of the Fish Slap. Despite the adherence to this theme, this build is not weak at all. It's a simple, set-it-and-forget-it, point-and-shoot build. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES It's kind of all over the place, but this build could make use of so many skills that choices had to be made, and some things had to be left out. Burn Both Ends normally does not proc on self-damage or self-dots. However, if you have an active bonus element while self-dotted, that bonus element "ticking on top of" your dot (it doesn't actually deal extra damage to you, but it's there) will stack Burn Both Ends for you. That way, you don't need to always be taking damage to benefit from Burn Both Ends. This build self-dots through the Infernal Wish, and one of your bonus element anointments will almost always be active. It's also notable that Body & Mind is action skill damage, along with being splash damage. These are your first two damage types. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. Optionally Phasecast for using an appropriately anointed Blade Fury. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Cryo. This is element #1. GUNS Blade Fury, single projectile, with Consecutive Hits, Killstack, and/or 250% Phasecast gun damage anointments. The Blade Fury deals both gun (or "projectile") damage and melee damage, giving you damage types 3 and 4. It is also non-elemental: "element" #2. CLASS MOD Muse, with as many points into Laid Bare as possible, and hopefully also an Illuminated Fist point. The Muse orb is grenade damage, believe it or not. Damage type #5. Recommended passives: grenade damage, action skill cooldown rate, melee damage, weapon damage, assault rifle damage, mag size. SHIELD Infernal Wish, with ASE 50% Incendiary bonus element anointment. These ASE 50% anointments are technically "bullet damage", and yes, that's a thing in the code, separate from the damage type that comes from your gun. Damage type 6, and element 3. ARTIFACT Corrosive Stone Static Charge. Elements 4 and 5. Note that the corrosive here, the fire on your shield anoint, and your cryo action skill element all can be swapped around. But in order to keep the theme of the build, they all must be separate elements. Shock is always taken care of by the static charge. Recommended passives: assault rifle damage, area of effect damage, action skill cooldown rate, melee damage, elemental damage. GRENADE Anything you like, with an ASE 50% Radiation bonus element. Element #6. Fish Slap does decent work. If you want to make things really interesting, a Moxxi's Bouncing Pair could be put to use. It will regen your Infernal Wish if it damages shielded enemies. However, the explosions are huge, and it'll likely kill you. GAMEPLAY LOOP Activate your action skill and start shooting. Beware that the Infernal Wish dot will grow in strength as you play. Just don't kill the last enemy in the room with a strong dot on yourself. Remember that going down resets the Wish, so you can always just let it happen before killing that last enemy. Don't be afraid of FFYL; the Blade Fury is very strong. Or if there's no enemies left and you're about to burn alive, look around for health vials. For bossing, a 250% Phasecast gun damage anointed Blade Fury is strongly recommended. Consecutive Hits is your reliable mainstay. Killstack is for less dangerous areas, as going into FFYL will make you lose Killstacks. Gun damage, bullet damage, grenade damage, action skill damage, melee damage, splash damage, non-elemental, fire, shock, corrosive, rad, and cryo. All in one very simple package.

Tediore chuckin' Amara. Mother chucker. Mother Chuckin' Amara SYNOPSIS Tediore chuckin' Amara. Mother chucker. INTRO Inspired long ago by LessHandsomeJack's Yeetbot build, this is a Tediore chucking build that went through many iterations and many failures, especially after the undeserved 50% nerf to Tediore chucks. This is as consistent and strong a Tediore Amara can be. It's mostly the Anarchy show, at least for high end content. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES This is a radiation only build, so Clear The Mind is essential. This is also a Spiritual Driver build, so Mindfulness is essential. Sustainment is necessary to stay alive, and that leaves not much room for blue tree. Tediore chucks can crit, though, so Transcend is a good investment. ACTION SKILL Light Fantastic. Optionally Shooting Star to help with bossing. The long duration of Phaseflare-type skills is important for anointment uptime. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Always corrosive. This is mostly because a corrosive self-dot from the Spiritual Driver will last the longest and therefore keep up your Mindfulness stacks the longest. Further, most strong enemies are armored, and that's radiation's worst matchup. MAIN GUN Anarchy, x18, in radiation, with either Consecutive Hits or 150/90 anointment. The highest chuck damage rad Anarchy is 3185x18 with a mag size of 11. The per-shot damage is a little less than a x20 Anarchy, but the higher mag size means more chuck damage, especially when factoring in mag size increases. The base of the chuck damage formula is card damage * pellets * ammo left in mag. Keep in mind the Anarchy's quirks. Interrupting your reload animation in any way makes you lose your stacks. If you've started and haven't fully finished your reload and interrupt it with throwing a grenade, using your action skill, mantling, getting downed, etc., then your stacks are gone. You can build up your stacks again while in combat, but just be aware of what might cause your damage to suddenly drop off. OTHER RADIATION TEDIORE GUNS Needle Gun, with Consecutive Hits or 150/90 anointment. This is the second best chucking gun, after the Anarchy. The Horizon, x9, 5 mag, with Consecutive Hits, is noticeably weaker, but very fun to toss around enemies with. Shoot the reload bubble while it's soaring through the air and it will create a huge singularity, then explode. Bangarang, with Consecutive Hits anointment. Also somewhat weak, but fun to use if you don't mind lots of flashing lights. Purple Keenfire and Sureshot Tediores, with Consecutive Hits anointment. Look for homing MIRV parts, as other parts on Tediores have much weaker chuck damage. The Handsome Jackhammer is really strong, and in a corrosive variant is great for bossing if you keep your distance from it. Deviating from Tediore a little bit, a couple other guns that work decently with this build are a radiation Backburner, Plaguebearer, and Slow Hand with Consecutive Hits anointment. FFYL GUN A fully stacked Anarchy could get you up from FFYL, but there are reasons you may not have that available. A Free Radical or Plasma Coil with Consecutive Hits is a reliable FFYL weapon. CLASS MOD Spiritual Driver, with as many points into Mindfulness as possible. Recommended anointments: grenade damage (Tediore chucks get grenade damage), splash damage, splash damage radius, action skill cooldown rate, weapon damage, mag size. Tediore chucks get gun damage bonuses at the time the chuck occurs. So if you run fast and chuck, the Spiritual Driver will greatly increase the damage of the explosion. Protip: turn dialog volume all the way down if you do not wish to hear Amara screaming from self-dots all of the time. SHIELD Red Suit, with ASE 50% radiation bonus element. This shield will prevent you from dying to your own Tediore chucks, and will allow you throw them with reckless abandon and increase their radius through splash radius passives. It will also shield you from your own Backburner and Plaguebearer shots, if you're using those guns. A Power Charge augment or two on this shield is beneficial. ARTIFACT Cutpurse Victory Rush. Throwing a Fish Slap with a Cutpurse will keep up your ammo reserves, allowing you to chuck endlessly. Recommended passives: grenade damage, area of effect damage in the 2nd or 3rd slot (which will also increase area radius), action skill cooldown rate, radiation damage, mag size, move speed. A second recommended artifact is an Elemental Projector Victory Rush. This can be swapped in for boss fights where you plan on killing the boss before running out of reserves. Throw a Fish at your foot to dot yourself and proc it. If you do run out of ammo before the fight is over, you can always briefly swap in the Cutpurse to refill. In the gameplay video above, all footage was taken with the Cutpurse equipped, except for the Hemovorous fight, for which the Elemental Projector was used. Or you can run the Elemental Projector most of the time by equipping a different weapon type in each slot, and simply swap when you run out of ammo for one type. Just remember that if you swap away from the Anarchy, it is no longer stacked. GRENADE Fish Slap, in radiation, with ASA 150% grenade damage anointment. This anointment will greatly increase your chuck damage when Light Fantastic is active, as chucks get grenade damage. The Fish itself will be used to proc Cutpurse and restore your ammo reserves. It can also be thrown at your feet to dot yourself and get stacks of Mindfulness outside of an action skill activation. The Fish in radiation will not be able to hurt you, because of the Red Suit. If running the Elemental Projector, something like a radiation Lightspeed for throwing at your feet will more reliably proc a radiation dot. GAMEPLAY LOOP Summon Light Fantastic, shoot your gun once, make sure you're moving really fast, and then chuck. Shoot your chuck's target bubble if it has one. Chuck again. The faster you move while the gun leaves your hands, the more damage it will do when it explodes. Throw Fish at enemies every so often to replenish your ammo. If you've lost Mindfulness stacks, throw Fish at your feet until you're dotted. Light Fantastic is often not used for damage. Just activate it and forget it; go about chucking. Occasionally, though, it will find a way to kill some enemies and become very strong, in which case you can pay attention to it and direct it around. For tankier bosses such as Scourge, the Shooting Star variant of Phaseflare can help you out, provided you buff it up with a few punches. There's also the Elemental Projector. As long as you're chucking, Sustainment will do a great job of keeping you alive. You can be very aggressive with this build if you keep performing actions. If you're using the Anarchy, pre-stack it at the ammo vendor. Be careful not to ever interrupt its reload animation until it is fully complete, otherwise you lose your stacks. You can rebuild stacks while in combat, if necessary.

A very strong Spark Plug slam build. Teslamara SYNOP SIS A very strong Spark Plug slam build. INTRO The ultimate evolution of the original Amara Spark Plug build , it has grown almost too strong. It can speed through nearly any content. And it's very simple to play. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES There are some gun-related skills for your the Face Puncher, your FFYL weapon, or shooting the Guardian Angel (see "Notes - Shooting the Guardian Angel" section at the bottom). Transcend also is beneficial for the Spark Plug, because the Spark Plug can crit. Burn Both Ends can be self-stacked by the Spiritual Driver self-dot and an active bonus element (Terror Cryo). Normally, self damage does not stack Burn Both Ends, but a bonus element "ticking on top of" a self-dot will. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. Optionally base Phasegrasp for bosses for the lack of duration and shorter cooldown. You can actually use any action skill you want, just be aware that waiting too long between activations will make you lose damage. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Always corrosive. Nothing of importance changes if you change your action skill element, so corrosive is chosen for the longest dot length. The longer the dot is on you, the longer you have Mindfulness movement speed and the longer you have Burn Both Ends damage. MAIN GUN Guardian Angel, with Terror Cryo anointment. Hold this, slam, and move away for increased Spark Plug damage. FFYL GUN If you have any still going, your Spark Plugs will get you up from FFYL most of the time, but it may be wise to carry something like a Free Radical or other strong gun. Anointment possibilities: Consecutive Hits, Terror Cryo, Terror Crit. BACKUP GUN Face Puncher, preferably x14, with Terror Cryo anointment. With Body & Mind active, this gun can help you quickly take out distant flying enemies or get you up from FFYL. CLASS MOD Spiritual Driver, with as many points into Mindfulness as possible. Movement speed is quite important for slam builds. Otherwise, it's used to self-stack Burn Both Ends, in conjuction with an active bonus element. The most important passive is Splash Damage Radius, as that will increase the radius of your slams, and thus increase the area over which you can apply Groundbreaker. Other passives: action skill cooldown rate, splash damage, action skill damage. SHIELD Re-Volter, with ASE Apply Terror. Your Re-Volter will break naturally, and reproc every time you kill an enemy, via the Shield Reboot Guardian Rank perk. This frees up an anoint slot instead of using Action Skill Start. Another favorite of mine with this build is a corrosive Messy Breakup, with the same ASE Apply Terror anoint. Like the Re-Volter, this shield can re-break over and over again with Shield Reboot, giving you lots of drones. The drones are very helpful for bossing, distant enemies, and shock-immune enemies. ARTIFACT Spark Plug Static Charge. The Static Charge bonus element applies to the Spark Plug. The most important passive is Area Of Effect in the 2nd or 3rd slot, as that will also increase your splash radius and the radius of your slams. Other passives: action skill cooldown rate, shock damage, cryo damage, movement speed. GRENADE Fish Slap in various elements, with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. Use the Fish if you want to more quickly deal with immune shock heavies or dispatch a boss. GAMEPLAY LOOP Grasp immediately when it's available, then slam with reckless abandon. Move away from your Spark Plugs to increase damage from Guadian Angel. When out of combat, get into the habit of swapping away from your Guardian Angel, perhaps to something like the EMP5. The Guardian Angel increases all self-damage by 6x, so with the Driver self-dot active, you can actually down yourself while running between fights with no enemies around. NOTES - SHOOTING THE GUARDIAN ANGEL Guardian Angel with Indiscriminate makes the Indiscriminate ricochets double-dip the Guardian Angel bonus damage. The ricochets are very powerful. Randomly shooting the Guardian Angel at an enemy will sometimes clear all of the enemies around you and give you huge Groundbreaker damage for your next slam. This is a great technique for speeding up the Anthema fight: as you approach Anathema to slam a Spark Plug, shoot the Guardian Angel at his face. The bullets will ricochet and kill the mobs all around the arena, and your next slam will take a huge chunk out of Anathema. NOTES - SPECIFIC BOSSES The Spark Plug can completely meme on some bosses: Scourge, Rampager, Tyrant of Instinct (even the True version). Try and and see for yourself. Beware that during the Scourge fight, slamming a Spark Plug too close to the center of the arena can automatically chain-kill the Diadems that he spawns. Instead, place the Spark Plugs near the top of the center diamond on the side you enter the arena. The Spark Plug does not work at all against Hemo and Vermi. For that fight, equip an Elemental Projector Static Charge, and corrosive Fish Slap, and just Fish them to death. This build has a great damage formula, and this will make very quick work of the fight.

True melee and action skill hybrid build. Sapphire Swan SYNOPSIS True melee and action skill hybrid build. INTRO Sapphire Swan, along with Ruby Swan and Emerald Swan , is one of my "jewels" of true melee builds. This one is the "blue jewel", designated as such because it uses a blue tree action skill, Tandava. It is the simplest of the three, currently, although I do have an update planned that slightly increases its complexity and greatly increases its power. The philosophy of this build is to supplement your punches with action skill damage, Groundbreaker, and the melee damage bonus vs frozen targets. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES Blue and purple trees synergize very well with a melee and action skill focus. However, you can't cap both of them and also pick up Sustainment, and this build currently needs Sustainment. It also needs Find Your Center, but you'll get that from the class mod. There's some reload speed taken in blue tree, and that's because there is a strategy for shooting your gun occasionally. ACTION SKILL Tandava. Optionally, Reverberation for bossing or better single target damage, especially with the special Reverberation technique. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Freezing enemies through punching is a core mechanic of this build, so always cryo. Even against Wotan. (There's no points in green tree for corrosive anyway.) PUNCHING GUN Psycho Stabber, with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. CASTING / UTILITY / PUNCHING GUN Guardian Angel, with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. Swap to this to cast Reverb or Tandava for more damage. In areas where mobs are weaker, like trials or Slaughterstar, you can get away with casting while holding the Psycho Stabber, if you like. You can also shoot the Guardian Angel at enemies for a couple of benefits. First, it will grant you healing th rough Sustainment. Second, when the projectiles ricochet through Indiscriminate, they will double dip the Guardian Angel bonus. When those ricocheted projectiles hit enemies, they will either kill them or at the very least give you good Groundbreaker damage. Because of that, this is the recommended punching gun against Guardians in the True Guardian Takedown. When you're not Phasecasting, alternate between shooting the Guardians and punching them. FFYL / BACKUP GUNS Face Puncher and Blade Fury (masher preferred) with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointments. The Face puncher is for killing enemies out of reach or to help with bossing. It will also get you out of FFYL if you still have Body & Mind active. The Blade Fury is a backup FFYL gun for when Body & Mind runs out and you're still not back up. CLASS MOD Breaker, with a required point into Find Your Center. True melee builds don't function well at all without FYC. The remaining points should go to Jab Cross, which adds action skill damage to your attacks. The most important passive is Splash Damage Radius. Other recommended passives: action skill damage, action skill cooldown rate, splash damage, melee damage. SHIELD Re-Volter, with Action Skill Start anointment. This adds tons of shock damage to all of your attacks, allowing you to keep cryo as your action skill element, even against blue HP bar bosses. Defensive augments are recommended, such as absorb, health charge, shield charge, turtle. ARTIFACT Cryo Stone Static Charge. The Cryo Stone further helps your punches freeze enemies. The Static Charge is the best all-around artifact suffix for melee. The most important passive is Area of Effect in the 2nd or 3rd slot, which will also increase area radius. Other recommended passives: elemental damage, action skill cooldown rate, melee damage, movement speed. GRENADE Mesmer or Hyperion Quasar (non sticky) or radiation Fish Slap (for immune Maliwan Heavies; see "Notes - Immune Maliwan Heavies" below), with ASE Apply Terror anointment. GAMEPLAY LOOP Phasecast at something to get your kill skills and anointments rolling. Throw a few punches, then repeat. Try to kill lots of enemies with your cast, to get more stacks of Expedite. If you fail, you still have other skills that will proc Expedite for you: Remnant, Unweave The Rainbow, Free The Soul, Body & Mind. There's also Combo Breaker, which comes in clutch every so often. Beware of the timing between your casts. Sometimes you don't want to cast twice in immediate succession. Since this is not a Phasezerker build, Rush stacks will need to be accrued manually. This isn't hard, but it's something to keep in mind. If you have 20 Rush stacks that are converted to Do Harm stacks when you cast, and your cast kills something, Avatar will refund you 10 Rush stacks. Then you can build up another 10 to get back to 20 before casting again. For bossing and tankier enemies, you will be relying more on your Reverbs and Tandavas than you will on your punches, but you can still punch down even the toughest mobs if you desire. For raid bosses, you can use a Phaseflare variant such as Shooting Star. During the Wotan fight, keep using cryo Tandava, and wait for some mobs to spawn. Tandava hitting Wotan and also killing those mobs will either 1. make Free The Soul and Remnant target Wotan or 2. give you enough Groundbreaker to shoot Wotan with the Face Puncher or Blade Fury. NOTES - IMMUNE MALIWAN HEAVIES The two elemental damage types you deal with this build are cryo and shock. There are no others. That means both Cryo and Shock immune Heavies in the Maliwan Takedown pose a problem. For Cryo heavies, your punch will essentially have zero effect, not even for delivering Groundbreaker. Cast at them with Reverb or Tandava and let the Re-Volter damage kill them. If it doesn't, ground slam at them to deliver Groundbreaker. You can also deliver Groundbreaker this way from damage you dealt to other enemies. Shock heavies are less of a problem. Your attacks will do significantly less damage to them, but it's still enough. They can be punched directly to deliver Groundbreaker. They can also be frozen. NOTES - MAYHEM 10/11 Most of the time, true melee builds should play on Mayhem 10 take advantage of Speed Demon, and this is one of those times. Other benign Mayhem 10 modifiers: Medium - Healy Avenger, Hard - Drone Ranger or Ticked Off, Very Hard - Not The Face.

Tips for building with Amara's Burn Both Ends skill at endgame. Burn Both Ends Burn Both Ends is an elemental damage increase that also applies to non-elemental attacks. That is to say, if you have 5 points into Tempest (30%) and 5 points into a fully stacked Burn Both Ends (75%), then you have +105% increased elemental damage. It will take a 100 damage elemental gun to 205 damage. And it will take a 100 damage non-elemental gun to 175 damage. But it doesn't apply to just guns, it applies to everything. So it is a very strong damage increase for multiple kinds of builds. The main drawback with it is it requires you do be damaged by enemies at a constant rate in order to keep up your stacks. Self damage normally does not stack it. There are a few workarounds, though, and these workarounds are core to several builds on this site. The main interaction in each of these workarounds is that, while self damage does not stack Burn Both Ends, an active bonus element on your self damage, being a separate instance, will indeed stack it. An active bonus element includes Urad, Terror Cryo, Re-Volter, and ASE 50% bonus element anointments on your grenade or shield. There are three main ways of dealing self damage: 1. Shoot your foot with something like a low level Sellout pistol, and dot yourself. The normal dot from the pistol won't stack BBE, but the bonus element will also dot you and start stacking it. Note that dotting yourself with an active cryo bonus element will slow you. 2. Have an Infernal Wish shield equipped and proc the fire self damage by shooting your gun. An active bonus element in this instance won't also dot you. Instead, it will be a hidden damage instance, but it ticks along with the Infernal Wish fire to stack BBE. 3. Have a Spiritual Driver equipped and use your action skill to proc a self-dot. In the same vein as the Infernal Wish, an active bonus element won't dot you when doing this, but it will tick along in the background, stacking BBE.

A Driver, Deathless, Infernal Wish, Light Fantastic (but can use any action skill), Terror, Urad, Dark Army build. I'm sure this combination breaks some cosmic rule somewhere. I can't believe this build exists. Unreal Amara SYNOPSIS A Driver, Deathless, Infernal Wish, Light Fantastic (but can use any action skill), Terror, Urad, Dark Army build. I'm sure this combination breaks some cosmic rule somewhere. I can't believe this build exists. INTRO Probably the most wild build on this site. It's the demented cousin of Nightmare Amara. The Dark Army allows for some crazy build concepts, and this build has all of them in one. It will get you killed, but it will kill other things way more effectively. All it requires is a little bit of setup and upkeep in some situations. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES Nothing crazy in the skill tree. Fairly standard gun stuff with concessions made for Deathless (no Clarity, Samsara, or Sustainment) and Driver (going far enough into green for Mindfulness). Of note, however, is Burn Both Ends. When you are self-dotted by any means, and if you also have a bonus element active, that bonus element "ticking on top of" your self-dot will stack Burn Both Ends for you, without you having to take damage from enemies. You are self-dotted in this build through both the Spiritual Driver and the Infernal Wish. And you always have a bonus element active in the form of Urad. ACTION SKILL Light Fantastic, but literally anything. Some action skills, of course, will be stronger than others. Light Fantastic is.... fantastic in the Guardian Takedown. Reverberation, Tandava, Phaseslam, and Fracture are all good. There's no reason to use a Grasp skill, but it won't hurt. You don't even have to use your action skill but once every now and then to proc your Terror anoints. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever is suited to your content, yes even including cryo on a Driver build. You don't need to be moving fast while in combat. See the next section. Your action skill element also does not need to match your gun's element. SETTING UP THE DARK ARMY Dark Army drones, when summoned (i.e., when you swap to the gun), retain all of your gun damage bonuses you have at the moment of the swap and summoning. Coupled with the Spiritual Driver class mod and lots of movement speed, you can make the Dark Army drones permanently, hugely buffed. Credit to Skkra on the Borderlands 3 subreddit for this interaction. To prebuff the Dark Army drones before combat: make sure you are not on the specific Dark Army you want. Fire your gun until the Infernal Wish dots you. Wait for your Mindfulness stacks to get up to 25. At max Mindfulness, run and slide and, at the beginning of the slide when you are moving fastest, swap to the Dark Army you want. Now those newly-summoned drones have Driver's movespeed gun damage permanently, or at least until you die, fast travel, or teleport. If any of those things happen, just repeat the process. GUNS Dark Armies in all elements except Radiation, all with the Urad anointment. FFYL GUN The Dark Army drones will get you out of FFYL. However, there is a tiny, tiny amount of situations where they won't do anything for you, such as if you are in FFYL and get teleported during the Scourge fight. In such a case, carry something like a Free Radical with Urad anointment. Note that the Dark Army you hold in your hand is only a small percentage of your damage output. The vast majority comes from your drones and Light Fantastic if you're using it. CLASS MOD Spiritual Driver, with as many points into Mindfulness as possible. This is the core item that will give your drones their permanent power. Recommended passives: action skill cooldown rate, splash damage, splash damage radius, SMG damage, weapon damage, action skill damage. Avoid mag size passives. SHIELD Infernal Wish, with ASE Apply Terror anointment. The Wish does not add a projectile to your Dark Army drones. It is simply there to buff your own gun by a little bit and to allow for easy self-dotting outside of action skill usage. The Driver takes care of dotting you when you use your action skill, but Phaseflare-type action skills do not get activated very frequently. ARTIFACT Snowdrift Deathless. This will greatly increase your slide speed when you are pre-buffing the Dark Army drones. Recommended passives: SMG damage, action skill cooldown rate, area of effect damage in the 2nd or 3rd slot (which will also increase area radius), elemental damage, movespeed. GRENADE Whatever you like, with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. The Hyperion Quasar (non sticky) is very good for grouping up enemies so your Dark Army drones can shoot 'em all at once, and your Light Fantastic can blow all of them up at once. GAMEPLAY LOOP After pre-buffing your Dark Army drones, all you need to do is fire the Dark Army in your hand a little bit. You don't even need to hit anything with it. The purpose is 1. to empty the mag and force a reload, which makes the drones deal elemental damage (according to the gun's element) for a short time. And 2. to proc the Infernal Wish dot on yourself, which will keep Burn Both Ends stacks up. You can stand still, even cryo yourself with a cryo action skill with the Driver; your drones are still buffed, and your handheld gun's damage doesn't matter. However, this being a Deathless build that also procs the Wish on itself, you will get put into FFYL as part of the normal gameplay. But don't let that stop you; this build is a freight train. Your Dark Army drones will get you back up in short order. The only thing to watch out for is if you're going to go down, you're dotted, and the last enemy is about to die. You can't get up from FFYL if there are no enemies left. In that case, stop shooting and let that enemy down you before killing them.